


destroy what destroys you

by lavenderforluck



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Depression, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mild Language, band au, boxing au, niall is not famous in this, past off screen suicide, the harry/zayn is mostly past but there are hints of it here and there, there is some violence but just controlled boxing violence mostly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 22:57:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1959315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderforluck/pseuds/lavenderforluck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall helps Zayn face his fears. A boxing AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	destroy what destroys you

**Author's Note:**

> HI! This is a repost from when it was taken down. I edited it to the best of my ability, fixed some brit-picks, and tweaked a few minor things. Also - there's a 1975 lyric hidden in this story, if anyone can find it!
> 
> Please read the warnings and let me know if there are any warnings I didn't enter, and I will happily enter them for you.
> 
> The song that inspired this story and is also the one is said the band wrote [they didn't, in real life obviously] is called the funeral by band of horses.

_to know me as hardly golden is to know me all wrong_

[the funeral](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPW8y6woTBI), band of horses

 

-

part I

-

 

Zayn pulls his beanie over his ears again, tucking his fag in his sleeve. Elephant & Castle is a part of London he doesn’t venture too often, preferring settings with car services lining the block and girls in high heels and dressed up in Balenciaga; flocking with people who recognised his face. These neighborhoods had a dark and dense quality about them, and they reminded him too much of his childhood.

It’s muggy grayness of the day is reflected once he walks into the warehouse. It barely passes as a gym as Zayn ever saw one: there’s a single counter near the back with a chair that had seen better days, and one long skinny bench along the wall, Zayn assumed for visitors. It’s a far cry from the private gym he belonged to in Kensington, with its tailored lobbies and juice counters and towel services. He leaned on the counter and let his bag drop onto the floor next to him.

A blonde boy seems startled to see someone in the lobby, one of his hands tucked up under his Derby County shirt. “Can I help you?”

“A friend of mine recommended this gym. I was told there was a trainer here,” Zayn says, feeling more and more out of place. “Who was especially sought after.”

The boy cocked his eyebrow at him, obviously thinking the same thing. “You want to fight here?” He asked suspiciously. Then, “It’s not exactly cheap to train with him.”

Zayn nearly scoffed because this warehouse reeked of cheap furniture and dirty floor mats, and it was highly unlikely that anyone who trained here could afford the same personal trainers Zayn has in the past. “That won’t be a problem for me.”

“M’sure it won’t,” the guy responds snarkily, but he’s already moving out from behind the desk and down the hall before Zayn can think of a response. Zayn picks up his bag and follows him to the back.

It smells like chalk and old wood, an elusive, musty smell that is oddly comforting.  “The locker room is down through that door, and your trainer will be here, I don’t know, maybe ten minutes. I’m Sean, if you need anything.”

“Er. Thanks,” Zayn reaches out to shake his hand, but Sean behaves as if he doesn’t see it and walks back to the front. His hand hangs there for a moment, and Zayn imagines this is the first of many times he’ll want to throw in the towel right then and flee to his flat in Notting Hill. Maybe he’ll call up Louis and get smashed.

Instead, he trudges into the locker room, submerging himself in the heavy air, putrid with dampness. Zayn changes quickly, wincing when he realizes he looks like a walking Nike ad, all his gear costing more than this entire warehouse. He doesn’t look bad, but he does look wealthy, which if there is anything to gain from Sean’s attitude, is not favourable here.

 

-

 

“I’m Niall,” this boy is also Irish, with ruddy cheeks and round blue eyes, his complexion impossibly young. It makes Zayn feel uneasy, if the rumours about his fights are true. He looks like he wouldn’t harm a fly. “Okay, first thing is, you’re going to hit me in the face as hard as you can.”

“What?” Zayn stutters, his hands gloved properly and hanging uselessly at his sides. He takes a step back. Niall laughs, a dirtiness to his grin. He pops his mouth guard in and smiles around it. Zayn has an absurd urge to touch his teeth with the pads of his fingers.

He motions for Zayn to hit him, arms down by his sides, nodding encouragingly. Zayn sighs, swaying from one foot to another, pulls his arm back, and aims his fist at Niall’s cheek as hard as he can. If he wants to be hit, he’ll be hit.

It happens very quickly: Zayn’s sure he was going to hit Niall, but there’s a blur of color and limbs and pain, and Zayn is lying on his stomach with Niall’s knee in the middle of his back. Niall’s weight moves off him quickly and Zayn rolls to his side, breathing harshly.

“How did you do that?” Zayn pants, sitting up.

Niall shrugs, “Offensive block. If this was a fight, I would’ve won.”

“Then why’d you ask me to hit you in the first place?”

Niall smirks and lends a hand for Zayn to stand up. Zayn takes it. “Look, in the ring, a move like that would never fly. I usually teach just boxing, but it’s different on the street. You need to know how to protect yourself. And with good reason, ya think? Anyway, rule number one: Always protect yourself. Don’t offense if you have no defense. And you have no defense,” he says flatly. Zayn frowns. He has defense. He’s not an idiot. He can so defend.

“Rule number two: don’t be arrogant. Don’t underestimate size or lack thereof. Take on anyone with just as much vigilance, no matter what. They might surprise you.”

He’s beginning to realise that without it needing to be said; Niall is a house on fire with only faint lines of definition, barely more than a lightweight with a good hook if Zayn didn’t know any better. But he does now. Niall asks Zayn to hit him again. So Zayn does, and he ends up on his stomach.

 

-

 

His sessions training with Niall are four times a week. Zayn stops calling his driver and starts taking the tube down to Elephant and Castle when the mornings are still thick with mist and gray fog and only the earliest of commuters are awake, blinking bleary eyed as they try to read the morning papers.

In Notting Hill, Zayn sits alone inside his posh flat and drinks pinot noir straight out of the bottle, ignoring calls from his publicist and Liam alike, shredding old newspaper clippings his Baba used to send him when the band was first taking off.

He thinks about calling Harry a lot, but his hand stutters over the call button over and over until he gives up. Their hiatus has been the tabloids’ new fixation since they announced it two weeks ago, only second to Harry’s admittance into a cushy rehab in the rolling knolls of south Kent.

The thought of him is bittersweet and makes Zayn’s chest burn, not unlike swallowing a mouthful of scotch without bracing for it first. He never manages to call, or write, or say his name outlook, as if Harry is too painful a subject to broach and so he becomes a ghost; a shadow that follows Zayn’s life no matter where he goes. He sleeps pretending he doesn’t miss him. His curls. His laugh. His eyes before they were addled with drugs, bright green, and gleaming with prospect.

 

-

 

Niall’s accent is harsh and it curls around the edges of his mouth, like he’s rolling dice on his tongue while he talks. It’s roguish and sometimes startling, especially when he’s yelling at Zayn. He yells at Zayn a lot, gets angry with Zayn when he doesn’t punch hard enough, when he isn’t quick enough, when he isn’t angry enough. Zayn tries, a steady sweat dripping from his brows and the insides of his elbows; muscles protesting first and then begging for release. Niall never relents.

Sometimes, on the worst days, Niall will call it a quits too early. He sounds roguish and disappointed, calls Zayn weak for not trying, for not losing himself. Zayn has lost himself many times before: in fame, in music, in people, in drugs, in alcohol. Always in pursuit of trying to forget. He doesn’t want to lose himself any longer - not after Harry - he’s trying to find himself. In the cold concrete walls, in the pungent boxing gloves, in his aching bones, he’s trying to find that person he lost.

He wishes he could articulate this, but instead he remains silent, feeling stupid in his flashy Nike kit.

 

-

 

It’s nearly a month of training before Zayn knocks Niall back and he tumbles down onto the floor in a sprawl of limbs. He doesn’t realize he’s done so at first, in a daze of harder faster better stronger, until Niall’s flat on his bum and holding his nose, blood seeping between his fingers.

“Shit, I’m sorry - ,” Zayn squeaks, but Niall stands up, takes his shirt off and holds it to his nose. Zayn cannot gauge whether he’s just fucked everything over, because it’s probably in Niall’s rule book that you’re not supposed to take a chunk out of the instructor, but when he looks up again, Niall is smiling with pink tinged teeth.

“That was fucking fantastic,” Niall compliments.

“What?” Zayn stares at him blankly.

Niall tips his head back and pressing his shirt to his nose. His chest is flushed pink, trace definition lines curving on either side of his abdomen. Zayn averts his eyes, staring somewhere behind Niall’s right ear.

“That’s improvement. You found a weak spot and you exploited it – though you still need to keep up your defense ‘cos not everyone’s going to cheer you on after you smack ‘em that hard in the face. No need to hit me square in the nose again but - excellent,” Niall stands up, and Zayn takes a moment to enjoy the way the muscles in his back ripple underneath his skin. His nose looks swollen, the smear of the blood around his mouth giving him a rough, feral quality.

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

Niall starts, like he hadn’t considered it before, and then tips his head back and laughs. His neck is a long line of pale skin. “Not really. This isn’t the type of pain to be scared of, innit?”

He claps Zayn’s shoulder, his hand clammy with sweat and too hot. Zayn feels the imprints of his fingers minutes after Niall has already retreated to find some ice.

 

-

 

Louis is staring at him with hooded, sad eyes when Zayn lets him in late on a Thursday night. Louis assesses Zayn’s level of intoxication, but his loaded mini bar remains untouched and clean from the last time his housekeeper came in. Instead he had been planning on a bath to soak his knee and settling down to Million Dollar Baby. Maybe Hilary Swank could give him tips.

“I saw Haz today,” Louis starts and then his frowns, not trusting himself to say anything more. Zayn opens his arms for him.

Louis crawls into Zayn’s embrace like a limpet. “Oh, Lou,” Zayn comforts, a deep ache in his gut, wishing he’d never come here. Zayn was looking forward to a decidedly boring evening in. He wanted to shroud himself in solitude. “Lou, Lou, Lou.”

Louis wrenches himself from Zayn and rubs his eyes, “I don’t want to talk about it. I want to go get pissed.”

Zayn’s got training with Niall tomorrow, and he shouldn’t agree, but he finds himself changing out his track bottoms, grabbing his leather jacket and his cards before slamming the door behind him. In the elevator, Louis grasps on his hand and squeezes tightly enough for it to hurt as they descend on ground level, and Zayn lets him, fingering the fags in his pocket. Louis drops his hand and steers himself, face hard and vacant as they leave the lobby of Zayn’s flat complex, waiting for the flash of paparazzi to come.

They don’t need any more controversy.

 

-

 

It’s like he’s stepping back into his old life: before the hiatus, before Harry and his stint, before Niall, before boxing. Before blood and pulsating bruises, and yet somehow Zayn feels like his life before any of it was more broken than it is now.

Louis gets drunk dirty and quick, sitting in a VIP his assistant called ahead for. He offers Zayn a spliff, careless of whatever club policy they’re excluded from abiding, which Zayn hits. He offers Zayn a shot, then another, which Zayn takes. He offers Zayn a line of coke, and they share it, Louis nipping at Zayn’s lips for a bit of leftover powder. It’s easy to slip back into that damaged person, comfortable in his reckless misery. He’s still healing from all the wreckage he endured the last time round with Harry, and being drunk and obnoxious with Louis feels like ripping open a scab.

Zayn leans against the leather booth and watches the world around him sway. Louis is sidled up next to him smelling like Tom Ford, and yet they could be on opposite ends of the world. Pretty girls with twinkling eyes and handsome blokes laugh around them, offering more, letting them take. No one says to them: this is wrong. Go home to your beds and sleep it off. No one says to them: this is too much. You are stupid and arrogant and you’re spiraling out of control.

Zayn nurses his slow burn in his gut, drunk enough to giggle incessantly without anything being particularly funny. Hands offer him more and more, and who is he to say no to them.

Guilt is second nature for him. Just like chaos was for Harry.

Zayn closes his eyes and sees the blood seeping through Niall’s fingers as he held his nose, the metallic scent of blood fragrant in the damp air of the warehouse. His shoulders ripple like a rock dropped in water, cheeks flushed and eyes blinking sweat out of his eyes. Zayn cannot recall him ever to be still, but a blur of limbs and pink skin, harshly exhales through his freckled nose, egging Zayn to be better, to hit harder.

He looks down at his hands to find broken skin and bruised knuckles, his knee aching. Blood starts to seep through his hands and he brings them into the light, unable to look away as it runs down his palm and down his wrists. He sticks his tongue out to lick at it, and flinches, because it tastes like Harry.

 

-

 

“Looks like you had a rough night,” Niall nods to him, flexing his biceps as he stretches against the wall.

Zayn nods. He should have called and cancelled, but he didn’t. For some reason, Niall’s unabashed disappoint makes him nervous, and so here he was. Zayn pulls his gloves on and felt like death.

His first punch is sluggish. Niall pushes his shoulders back into proper form crudely. His second punch falters and he is blocked easily. His eyes are heavy and sore.

Zayn is flat on his back within a few minutes, and Niall pressing his knee into his side, hard. His face is slightly pink and his eyes are searching like he’s looking for something in Zayn, brow pulled up in irritation. Finally, he demands, “What do you think you’re playing at?”

“Nothing. My head hurts, is all.”

“So does mine. Who cares?” Niall excuses flippantly, even though he makes no secret that his head does not hurt. “It’s the same days every week, I expect you to come in good shape, not like this. You’re still fucked from the night before,” Niall spits disgustedly, clamoring off Zayn and throwing his gloves off.

Zayn flinches and rolls over. He’s an idiot, so he says, “I do have a life outside of this, you know.”

Niall rounds on him, “Yeah, we all know. That’s why you’re so weak,” he shakes his head, “you’re not devout.”

Zayn flinches back like he’s been hit, ironically enough. Niall speaks again before Zayn is even able to defend himself, sitting up.

“Why did you come here? Why did you seek me out?” he asks, his eyes narrowing in on Zayn.

“I didn’t seek you out,” Zayn spits defensively, though it’s far from the truth. Niall is the only trainer this side of the city who takes in street fighters and turns them into Olympians and his selectivity of who he chooses to train is notorious amongst serious boxers and celebrities looking to buff up. Zayn feels something twinge in his chest like heartburn.

Niall shakes his head, “Bollocks you didn’t. I’m the reason this place exists. You think for a second I treat you any different because your name is in The Sun then you can kindly fuck off. This is my place, yeah?”

“I’m don’t –”

“You do. Get out. Lesson’s over.”

“Niall -”

“No,” Niall shakes his head again, turning around and stalking back to his den.

Zayn head pounds, his face warm with humiliation as he jumps to his feet, ripping his gloves and dropping them spitefully on the ground. When he looks up again, Niall is heading towards him, clenched fist reared back. He takes Zayn down with a single hit, dirty and impeccable, just below his cheek.

“What the fuck,” Zayn groans, curling in on his side and cradling his face. His brain feels like it’s been rocked inside his skull and his eyes water as he glares up at Niall’s slight form, chest heaving.

“You broke both rules, you arrogant fuck,” Niall curses.

 

-

 

It’s not the sort of bruise Zayn can ease with goose feather pillows and chardonnay, though he certainly tries. It’s unlike the sort of aches and pains Zayn used to convince himself of when he was too lazy to go to vocal lessons or rehearsals; too tangible to be compared to his usual wallowing. It’s broken blood under his skin, a blemish roughly the size of Niall’s fist. Zayn prods at it every so often, hot and swollen underneath his touch.

Alan Carr is on mute. Zayn remembers when Liam, Harry, Lou and he would all huddle on a bed significantly less luxurious than this, talking about girls and fans and stories of touring, young and on the brink of life. He feels terribly old now, even though he’s just surpassed he’s about to surpass his twenty second birthday in a few weeks. There is something in his skin that itches, similar to a bruise, though Zayn knows it runs deeper than that. It doesn’t heal.

He spends the rest of the night flipping through old photos on one of his expired iPhones, fingers nimble and shaking with nostalgia, a longing consuming his body as he traces the outline of Harry’s face, cherub like and pretty, and then his own, marveling at how they looked before the apathy, and the fame, and the drugs. He struggles for a word to describe them, the undiluted brightness in their eyes.

Its wholeness, he realises a moment later. They look whole.

He doesn’t fall asleep for a long time.

 

-

 

He spends one rainy Sunday evening tracing his steps back to the grimy alley where Niall’s gym is nestled between two other large buildings; one vacant and closed off to squatters, the other under high security. From across the street, he sees that the lights are on inside but Sean isn’t at his usual post in the front. Zayn leans back against the brick wall of a grungy club and lights a fag, his hood up and covering his face.

There are three or four paps in his face before he can make a safe getaway, cornered in the alley. He panics, gut rolling as he shields his face away from their light, no Louis or Liam to hide behind, fingers tucked into coattails as they’re whisked away into another car to another club. This is different. They’ve caught him off guard and vulnerable.

His vision blurs as he pushes himself out of their barrier, a camera hitting his palm. It’s the same hot, swishing panic that swells inside his chest in throat; Harry and him tumbling out of the club, broken and belligerent and high as the clouds, and the paparazzi hounded him before Zayn could reach him. Below him, Harry has fallen and curled up on  the dirty sidewalk, crying drunkenly and protecting his neck as the paparazzi close in, like vultures, and just like last time, Zayn can’t get there fast enough –

His hip makes contact with the side of a car and he winces, his eyes wide with panic as he whirls around, but the flashes are getting brighter and his vision is spotting from the negative color. Niall jumps out of his car, leaning on the door, his hair matting from the rain almost instantaneously.

Zayn has no idea where he came from.

“Get in,” he motions and Zayn nearly rips the car door open, slamming into the seat and covering his head with his jumper until Niall pulls the car into gear and drives them away.

 

-

 

The rain turns to torrential downpour, and driving in it feels more like wading through a pool. Zayn is drowning, his body shaking as he holds himself, soaked through all his clothes. He resolutely does not look at Niall, who drives too recklessly, and too fast, speeding around cards and swerving through traffic. It makes Zayn nervous. It’s interesting, the things he chooses to be destructive about.

Finally, Niall looks over, “Those cunting arseholes were out of line.”

“Were they?” Zayn asks dazedly, “I don’t know where the line is anymore.”

Niall regards him sadly for a moment. Zayn looks away first, staring at his hands. “We’re going back to mine. I owe you a sandwich.”

“Okay,” Zayn agrees, voice very small, “I think I hit one of them.”

Niall nearly smiles at that, nodding, “You did. Top form, though you missed his face and hit the camera.”

The windshield wipers are the only sound Zayn hears from the rest of the drive.

 

-

 

Niall parks on a street lined with block counsel, some of which that have been converted into flats. This is a neighbourhood Zayn would never venture through, or even so much as bother thinking about. There’s a cold, reserved quality about these flats, as Niall unlocks the corridor entrance and motions for Zayn to follow him up a flight of stairs. The walls and ceiling are flat unpainted concrete, harsh and unforgiving underneath the rain outside.

There’s a television on in one of the downstairs dwellings, and someone is yelling in another. He feels immensely out of place.

Niall’s door sticks and the key does not fit quite right but they manage, tumbling inside. Zayn’s clothing has turned from wet and cold to damp and cold, and he stands in extreme disquiet in the middle of the flat, uncomfortable in his jeans.

There’s a cramped bathroom that Niall leads Zayn to, pushing at the small of his back with both of his hands, a warm compass that Zayn wishes he could sink into and forget, let Niall guide him. The sink drips underneath a single light.

“Wet clothes here,” Niall points to the hamper, “I’ll put a stack of joggers here,” he points to the sink, “Okay? Okay.”

When Zayn emerges from his shower, his hot skin objecting  against the damp draft, he finds a roll of clothes like Niall had promised sitting expectantly for him. Zayn can smell Niall on them, his scent so undiluted from sweat and the warehouse, concentrated pure underneath his nose that Zayn nearly chokes on it. He wonders what he’s doing here, in this boy’s flat, taking up his space and steaming up his bathroom and dumping his demons like Niall owes him anything.

He dresses. His skin feels too soft. The burn from getting hit and hitting back has left his muscles since Niall kicked him out. He misses it.

Except for the creaky wooden floors and the blank white walls, it’s rather nice and tidy. It is apparent that Niall is a minimalist, or he doesn’t really care. Zayn entertains the thought that he’s secretly a conman, constantly on the run and therefore never decorates. Niall’s cooking on an electric stove and Zayn leans on the cracked counters as it rains outside. There is a gray cast on the walls, stained orange from the golden kitchen light over the hob.

“Cheese toastie,” Niall announces as he slides a gooey mess onto a plate and passing it towards Zayn; it looks utterly delicious.

It’s greasy and the bread is crispy; it’s nothing like the usual organic grass fed filet mignon or the twenty three pound salads that Zayn’s accustomed to. It reminds him of spending nights with the boys in the back of their limo, eating McDonald’s whenever they felt like it and wiping grease on the Italian leather because they didn’t know any better and they didn’t care. He never thought he could miss something like that, but he does.

Niall wraps his hand after. He cleans it first, the alcohol stinging, then covers it with gauze and medical tape; in his frenzy Zayn had split the skin along the underside of his palm trying to find his escape. The adrenaline had kept him from feeling any pain until now.

Niall is methodical as he moves, winding the bandage round and round, tucking it neatly. He’s probably done it a thousand times. He touches Zayn like muscle memory.

He brings Zayn’s bandaged hand to his mouth, kissing his knuckles carefully. Zayn inhales sharply, mouth parting when he feels just the graze of Niall’s teeth along his skin. Niall looks up, and for a second time Zayn is shocked by the depth of his blue eyes, how they are both hard and soft at the same time, making his gut jump, skin prickle.

“It’s like that, innit?” He asks; voice like gravel.

Niall nods, his face blank of elaboration. “Might be.”

“Okay,” Zayn acquiesces, “okay.”

 

-

 

Niall does not touch like he fights, and the difference gives Zayn whiplash. Niall is soft as he pushes at Zayn’s shoulder, looming over him. The counter digs into the small of Zayn’s back as Niall presses him farther into the wood, but Zayn doesn’t mind. His hands consistent and careful.

They roll around in his sheets, cheap cotton and polyester blend as Niall spreads him into the mattress, always pressing, always pushing. He nips at Zayn’s bottom lip then and Zayn whimpers, a low whine in his throat. Niall’s cheeks are flushed when he pulls away to smile.

“You can stay here tonight, or I can call a cab,” he says softly, smoothing a hand over the side of Zayn’s face. Zayn fights against smiling into his palm.

“I’ll stay.”

“Yeah?” Niall raises his eyebrows, leaning in and nipping his cheekbone.

“Yeah,” Zayn nods.

Niall lets him sleep, even though they’re both eager to stay up all night and roll around between sheets until Zayn’s tongue tastes like Niall’s skin; until he’s memorised the way Niall shivers against his teeth. He marvels at the difference between the bed and ring, how here, Nick is quick to laughter and touches Zayn with fierce, intimidating reverence, like he’s satisfied just with his skin, his bones, and his body.

They sleep soundly. Zayn doesn’t dream of Harry, or paparazzi, or flashing camera lights.

 

-

 

At breakfast, Niall dresses for the gym and cooks them both plates heaping with eggs. “I’ve got no morning appointments. Come with me to the gym, we’ll train.”

“You sure?” Zayn asks as Niall reaches over with a piece of toast, soaking up Zayn’s running yolk and eating it.

Niall nods around a mouthful of egg. “Sure. Unless you don’t want to fight any longer.”

“No,” he definitely wants to learn more. “No, I want to. And – Niall,” Zayn grabs at Niall’s arm. “I’ll try. I’ll try this time.”

Niall regards him quietly, searching for a give in Zayn’s face but finding none. He grins. “I know you will.”

 

-

 

Zayn’s split his lip and stained his nice trainers with spit and blood, an unforgiving copper tang on his tongue and Niall’s padded fists flying at him. He’s knocked to the ground four times in the first fifteen minutes, but every time he stands back up, arms held in front of his face. Defense first, offense later.

“Try harder, block me!” Niall demands, hook flying right and uppercut coming in from underneath. Zayn barely blocks them, backing up and then circling around to his left.

His fist dodges out and Niall blocks him easily, pale shoulders slippery with sweat, his tank top soaked through and tied up around his hip. Zayn aims, trying again, and again, his brow wet and heavy as he blinks the sweat out of his eyes. Harder better faster stronger until -

Niall blinks back and wipes his mouth, a smear of pink on his cheek, and Zayn looks dumbly at his own padded fist, unsure if it really hit him in the jaw. “Excellent,” Niall beams, “Well done.”

Zayn smiles, unsure of his praise. Then Niall squares his shoulders and nods, “Okay, again.”

 

-

 

“Why’d you only have two rules?” Zayn asks, grunting as he circles around Niall again. He’s beginning to understand that his strength lies not in his actual fists, but his quickness, and rather than trying to knock Niall on his backside, he uses his quick legwork to tire him, try to find a soft place to land a blow. “Don’t things come in threes?”

“Whatever demons you’re running from,” Niall snaps at him, his fist making home into Zayn’s unprotected slide, “Destroy them. Destroy what destroys you, always.”

His mouth is smeared red with blood. Zayn wishes he could close his eyes for just a moment and listens to the smack of the gloves and the pounding of his skull. He’s infinite, bloodied, bruised, Niall coming at him like a force of nature, a hurricane.

“That’s the third rule?” Zayn breathes in surprise. Right now he feels like he’s not afraid of anything, already beaten down and broken by Niall’s hand, but he knows that it isn’t true.

Niall nods.

He’s afraid of Harry and his demons, the way his alabaster skin was stretched across his back, ribcage sharp like razor blades, tongue just as cutting. Harry had lost himself to a sea of misery, beauty, drugs, and golden tears, and Zayn had watched him and let him go. Zayn has seen someone wreck themselves from the inside out, and he hadn’t cared enough to stop it.

He’s afraid he’ll never be strong enough, always too weak, addicted to hollow things like attention and coke and those girls who refuse to stay throughout the night - fame has warped Zayn’s soul and he feels it in his blood, his head as it pounds, his fingers, feels himself bleeding and bruised and destitute, deprived of the things he used to be so fearful of.

He knocks Niall to the floor then, holding him down with a padded fist and breathing too hard. His heart feels like it is tearing at the seams, like he can’t calm down. It isn’t until his eyes refocus and his breathing starts to even out and his head clears that he feels Niall’s hands on his face, cupping his jaw and pulling him forward.

“Hey, hey,” Niall shushes, droplets of sweat and water running down the pale plains of his chest. Zayn closes his eyes briefly, the wet sting softening. Niall is sticky and too hot, but he smells like something Zayn can become familiar with, and that’s feels more dangerous than any fight. Zayn wonders if the harsh hum of his cheek swelling is similar to falling in love.

 

-

 

Liam calls one morning after Zayn has returned from the gym in South London. “Harry’s been discharged to his mum’s home. This is it. This is where we start over again, Zayn.”

Zayn swallows, playing idly with the bowl of plastic fruit on his counter. Liam sighs over the phone.

“You didn’t visit him once while he was in,” Liam says, and his voice has shrunk to something smaller.

“I know,” Zayn says hurriedly, not that he didn’t think about Harry every day. There were so many moments he was grabbing his keys and driving there himself, even if it is just to see him for a moment. Fear kept him rooted.

“He really needs us, now. We’re seeing him next week, and then we’re going a small holiday, okay? Paul should have emailed you all the finer details.”

“So that’s it. Hiatus over then.”

Zayn can picture Liam’s small, patient smile, “We’ll heal, Zayn. I know it’s been such shit lately, but we will.”

 

-

 

Zayn is sitting on the closed toilet in Niall’s tiny bathroom, the persistent draft making his skin goose bump.  His knees tucked underneath his arms as Niall cleans a cut on Zayn’s forehead, lip pulled up between his teeth in concentration.

He doesn’t stand up right away when Niall declares he’s finished. Instead he traces the bulge of Niall’s bicep instead, the strong curve of his shoulder. Niall is shorter than Zayn by just a half inch, but his body is carved out of muscle and bone, stronger than Zayn’s lithe physique will ever be. He pushes his nose into Niall’s side, his scent almost overwhelming.

“I’m leaving London soon. My hiatus is over,” Zayn explains, looking up through his long lashes. Niall traces the cut on Zayn’s forehead over the bandage.

“I’ll be here, I bet,” Niall smiles, but it’s careful around the edges, like he’s sad about it in a way he knows he’s not allowed to be. “You’ll know where to find me.”

“Yeah, I do. I will, I mean,” Zayn promises, his voice gruff in way he doesn’t want to explain. He feels like he’s suffocating because this is so new and so promising and yet - yet Niall is still smiling at him, and maybe it’s not something to be rushed. Maybe he really will be there when Zayn comes back. Maybe he’ll put Zayn back together then, too.

“Alright,” Niall tugs on the short hairs at the base of Zayn’s next, “Let’s have a shower, I’m absolutely ripe.”

Zayn laughs, eyes twinkling and he’s not sure how they both manage to fit in Niall’s shower together. Niall presses Zayn’s back against the cold tiles, spray hitting him right in the face as he leans up to kiss as Zayn’s mouth, open him up with his tongue. All this time Niall’s pressured him to be lost, and yet Zayn finds himself, every day, reflected back in the clear blue of Niall’s eyes.

 

-

 

The London sky is gloomy and familiar the next morning. The gray light favors Niall’s translucent skin, the shadow dancing along his shoulder blade. Niall shifts in his slumber and Zayn blinks, feeling the undercurrent of sleep pull him in again.

His knuckles are scabbed over and sniff as he reaches over to brush against Niall’s cheekbone, a smattering of pale freckles just barely visible.

Zayn closes his eyes again and listens to the way they both breathe. Behind his lids, a picture is painted. Niall’s mouth guard and how he smiles around it, that one strawberry-shaped bruise on his shoulder, the first time Zayn had knocked him to the ground. Niall, wearing Zayn’s sweatshirt around his tiny flat, barefoot and thunderous; his body curved like a whip.  

And the blood. Blood on Niall’s fingers, in his teeth and gums. The way Niall’s blood tastes on Zayn’s mouth, kissing underneath the single orange light in the kitchen. Kissing until he bleeds again. Licking away the salt on their lips, the cheese toasties on their fingers, sprawled between sheets never wanting to be found. Zayn’s spent his whole life running from demons. He’s spent his whole life hiding from his own shadow.

Curled up around Niall on a cheap Ikea mattress, stripped of his fame, and his defenses until he’s just bare bones and a beating heart, Zayn is unafraid.

-

 

part II

 

-

 

 _The Sun_ had caught wind of their stay in Holmes Chapel, and so the boys set off to hideaway in Perth instead. This is an old trick, and one they’ve always done: chasing the next flight to somewhere more secluded. It’s never enough, Zayn knows, it’ll never be enough. He’s learned that the privacy he so took for granted as a kid will never be replicated. They don’t even go out anymore, preferring to get drunk on their mini bars in whatever hotel they’re at, sedated and cooped up in their hotel rooms.

Australia is a stark contrast to the world Zayn has confined himself to these past few months with Niall, hidden away in a grim warehouse just south of the city in Elephant & Castle. He hardly reflects upon the prestige of the hotel they’re staying at in Perth, because he’s accustomed to this kind of atmosphere. It was the dark grayish light cast upon counsel flats and the smell of sweat on cushioned mats that enthralled him.

He realises, in the dark confines of his heart late into the night, that he may longer be interested in this life. No longer does he want to be part of a band that’s been in far too many magazines, examined and picked apart until they broke. He doesn’t want to record another album, hasn’t truly since they won their first Grammy with their sophomore debut. He doesn’t want television appearances or interviews. They have too many fans that seem a little hollow around the eyes. They are hollow around the eyes, too. Zayn is tired.

 

 

-

 

The veins underneath the translucent skin of Harry’s hands run down to his wrist like tiny blue rivers. The long length of Harry’s body, once broad shouldered and muscular is emaciated. It’s unnerving the way he’s shrunken into himself, fragile and soft Zayn knows he is not. Harry’s hands looked aged in a way that does not suit how many years he’s actually lived. His face is still young, despite the hardened, weary edge to his gaze.

Harry doesn’t say anything when he catches Zayn staring. Once settled on their private plane, Harry moves the arm rest and swings his legs into Zayn’s lap, his socked feet curling underneath his thigh. Harry settles in like a bird nesting, wings folded in and he’s so close Zayn can feel his eyelashes tickling his neck every time Harry blinks. Harry’s always sidled up to people who give him the least attention until they cannot focus on anything but him. Zayn is no exception.

He falls asleep soon after, and Zayn traces the purple track marks on the inside of his bony elbow because he wants to remind himself not to be a fooled by a boy this destructive.

 

-

 

They spend time in Australia trying to re-trace and re-learn each other. Liam and their manager have already scheduled out an agenda stout with recording schedules, contracts with guest writers, and the interviews they have lined up for press damage.

Zayn is required to go, but mostly he tunes them out and makes no secret of his obvious disinterest. He hides away in his hotel otherwise, wishing he could work up the nerve to call Niall but otherwise chain smoking on his secluded balcony, lost in his own head. He needs quiet like he needs oxygen.

Louis is a hovering, defensive mess around Harry, flocking his side and glaring at anyone who dares bring up the finer, less sympathetic details of Harry’s stint in rehab. With the way Louis is acting, it might as well been someone else who held Harry down and injected that heroin in his veins. Still, Zayn can sympathise. It is difficult to hold Harry accountable for all his fuck ups.

It only takes a fortnight before Harry is slipping into Zayn’s room at night. This is an old trick they used to pull when they were drunk or stoned or fucked up with homesickness, finding comfort in each other and never talking about it. Thinking about how he used to touch Harry makes Zayn sick to his stomach. There was a time when Zayn thought Harry was his soul mate, and yet when Harry needed him, he turned his back.

He can feel him more so that he can hear or smell him, as Harry’s presence is like an electric undercurrent whenever he’s in a room. Zayn turns to stare at Harry in the dark, standing in pyjama bottoms that may or may not be his own. Harry’s always giving himself to people or taking parts of them with him.

Zayn flips the comforter over and remains silent. Harry crawls in, hands seeking the softest parts of Zayn immediately like he’s mapped them out in his head. Harry pulls the sheet over their heads, lips mere inches away from Zayn’s cheek, his breath hot.

“Hi,” he whispers. “Are you quite finished being angry with me?”

Zayn sighs, wincing when Harry’s bony fingers poke him in the sides.

“Well,” Harry carries on, “I’ve missed you so much. I’ve missed us. I’ve missed going out with you. I missed all the havoc we used to wreak.”

“S’not who you are anymore, though,” Zayn reminds him, breathing in Harry’s air underneath the sheets. Just the thought of Harry relapsing spikes fear in his belly, and he feels a sense of urgency in reminding him of that. When you’re as beautiful and loved and as rich as Harry is, the allure is almost too strong. “We’re not like that anymore.”

“No,” Harry agrees chastely, tracing Zayn’s eyebrow, and kissing the side of his mouth. “None of us are who we used to be.”

 

-

 

Harry’s release challenges the band with an entirely new set of consequences: damage control, press tours, recording, talk-shows, and the band takes a No Drinking, No Drugs vow for Harry.

Louis loves his cocaine and he really loves his vodka, but he loves Harry more than both combined. Sometimes Zayn catches Louis looking over at him when he thinks no one else is watch and he feels like his inside have been tangled and ripped out again.

Zayn doesn’t want to go back to before, when Harry was confined to a rural rehabilitation centre out in the middle of south England, but it’s as if he’s watching the small pocket of peace he acquired in London the last few weeks drift farther away, his prospects of returning to Niall soon and to his regime at the warehouse becoming dimmer. He’s not mentioned it to the boys at all: not about Niall, or the boxing, or slumming it in south London. He cannot help but selfishly want to keep it to himself so he can savour it, untainted.

He still hasn’t called.

Zayn thought when Harry was released he’d face all his fears and be free of them, but he still wakes up completely gutted and sick with self-imposed blame, staring into the open heart of Harry’s sleeping face, curled up next to him. He wishes he could recapture the feeling of fearlessness he once acquired fighting with Niall, but the truth is that Zayn’s never known a day where he wasn’t so bloody afraid.

 

-

 

Destroy what destroys you.

Guilt is invisible and falls through Zayn’s fingers like smoke.  Harry was indestructible then and he is indestructible now, gangly and endearing. Just thinking of touching the hollow indents of Harry’s hips, Zayn’s fingers walking up the creamy expanse of his thighs makes him hot all over. Harry looks at the world through hooded, bedroom eyes, practiced in aloof disinterest and genuine kindness. Zayn feels a hook around his belly button that pulls him, _in, in, in_.

Especially when he twists those long legs in Zayn’s bed sheets once they return to London without asking. Harry spreads out, curls damp against the pillow, red lips beckoning Zayn, taunting him.

Harry is Hollywood’s darling. Harry can do no wrong. He wears vulnerability like a defense mechanism, one that never fails to pull on heartstrings.

But he is not as weak and infantile as his behavior suggests. Zayn knows better than to fall for it, despite his guilt; Harry might have dropped four stone and he might have those ugly purple scars on the insides of his arms and he might know what it’s like to be so high to not even know your own name, but the way he takes hold on someone’s heart does not scream fragile.

Zayn knows this. _Destroy what destroys_ -

 

-

 

He doesn’t call Niall, can’t imagine what he would say. _I’m back now_ , he thinks he’d say, his voice sounding stupid in his own head _. Can I see you?_

Instead, he dress down, tapes his palms and fingers. Harry rolls over, blinking against the light in Zayn’s flat and slipping up behind Zayn, curling around him. The morning is silent and bright; the city has barely woken itself. Harry doesn’t shatter the silence, but adapts to it, makes his presence known to Zayn in other ways.  Sometimes, Zayn is reminded by how much he hasn’t changed.

“Where are you off to?” he mumbles, sitting up and rubbing sleep from his eyes. Harry kisses the back of Zayn’s neck, his eyelashes ticking his nape.

“Out,” Zayn says shortly. He can hear Liam in his head then, telling him, be nice. In a way Zayn envies Liam’s ability to forgive so easily. Liam only focuses on what he wants to see, his ambition overriding the importance of Harry’s addictions until Harry was all the papers could talk about after his overdose. Liam only addressed the real problem because he was forced to. Harry shattered those illusions.

But Zayn isn’t as cruel. He hasn’t forgiven Harry yet because he loves him; knows he can better, knows he will prove it. Harry is counting on that. Harry knows Zayn will be honest where Louis indulges and Liam turns cheek.

“Oh, _out_ ,” Harry teases, his arms curling around Zayn’s shoulders, chin resting near his neck. “Are you into the fitness, now?”

“M’not into anything, Haz,” Zayn sighs tiredly, spinning around and cupping Harry’s cheeks. His palms are bigger, rougher than he remembers. Harry leans into his hands like he’s been waiting for it all this time.

Zayn spends so much time in his head he forgets to live inside his body. Harry looks up at him, lets himself be possessed by Zayn, back arching slightly into his touch. Zayn presses a kiss to Harry’s forehead amidst the curls and remembers the smell of his hair, something he used to associate with adoration and love before it became entangled with jealousy and guilt. There were good times for them, too. Memories filled with pure light.

Harry smiles like he remembers them too.

 

-

 

Sean is at the front desk and doesn’t look up. Zayn doesn’t expect him to.

Niall isn’t there, so Zayn hits the punching bag in the corner, until his back aches from exertion and his muscles are quivering with a burn so addictive it makes Zayn’s blood sing. With this kind of high, there is no crash after.

Zayn thinks about the bow of Niall’s lips, his sculpted, gratuitous biceps, and strains to perfect his form.

 

-

 

Louis finds a bruise on Zayn’s arm one day while they’re online shopping for Fair Isle sweaters and ridiculously expensive leather belts. His narrowed eyes focus in on the bruise before gaze wanders over to Harry, curled up on the sofa with a bag of Haribo and Legally Blonde.

Zayn grabs Louis’ hand, holding in a vice between them.

“Lou, no,” he shakes his head. Zayn doesn’t have the energy to be offended by Louis’ implication because he knows that out of everyone who witnesses Harry’s fall from grace, Louis took it like a personal betrayal, and he’s spiteful enough to hold them accountable, worst of all himself.

Zayn doesn’t have the guts to tell Louis that he was clipped by someone on a bicycle in Brixton, snooping around Niall’s old haunts, eyes narrowed for a shock of blonde hair.  He doesn’t even want to admit to himself.

Louis colours when his implication is caught out. He bites his lip, his messy fringe hiding his eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be a prick. I just thought…”

“Don’t be sorry,” Zayn interrupts him, and Louis’ shoulders slump, “I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime, I think.”

“I forget,” Louis regards him, small hands flipping his iPhone over in hands, “You hide your scars so well.”

 

-

 

Life resumes for the band, and in turn Zayn’s own disappears. They leave London on a blustery winter Tuesday. Zayn had called Niall and left a voicemail and his whole body wracks with nerves that he’ll never hear anything back; another part of him is nervous that he will. It’s been a month since he last trained now, and yet he still pushes upon his muscles, expecting them to ache.

Sweden is beautiful as always. He hasn’t left the studio or the hotel once.

There is incredible pressure for this album to do well, given Harry’s recent stint and his pedestal as a recovering heartthrob addict in the media, but Zayn feels jarred and edgy like they’re starting all over again. His eyes are bruised from exhaustion. This is their come back. They have to kill it.

He smokes more cigarettes than he should, but he doesn’t give a shit; nicotine hadn’t been on the drug vow. Harry lazes around, always in Zayn’s periphery, so much so that Zayn forgets what it’s like to have his own hotel room. Harry wears thick black cable knit jumpers and takes kitten sips from a bottle of lemon tea, watching the smoke furl out of Zayn’s mouth suffocate their private balcony.

“You don’t have to hate me, you know,” Harry informs him one day after a particularly rough rehearsal. He’s sitting on a lounge chair as Zayn smokes, long legs tucked up underneath one of his arms. He looks young, but not young enough for Zayn to let his guard down.

Liam had been near tears, his entire face red, and Harry had sat impassively while he was scolded for wasting studio time with petty mess ups. A year or two ago Zayn would have jumped to his defense and gone up against Liam for being such a bloody perfectionist all the time, but instead he remained silent.

“I don’t hate you, Harry,” Zayn shakes his head, “You’ve got it wrong. Probably love you too much, you know?”

“I know you haven’t forgiven me,” Harry peers up at him.  Zayn inhales so sharply it burns his throat. “It’s okay to be angry. I’m angry too. I was weak. I let everyone down.”

Zayn feels a pang of pity and he curses to himself, helpless to how much he truly loves Harry. He sits down on the lounge chair, wrapping an arm around Harry’s bony shoulders and pulling him closer, cigarette burning between his lips. Harry unfolds his body and shuffles into Zayn’s side, grateful for the affection. He smells like shampoo and just washed flannel. It’s different than before, he’s different than before.

“We’ll figure you out yet,” Zayn mumbles into the crown of Harry’s head, flicking his fag. Harry clutches at the fabric of Zayn’s jumper tightly for a moment, sighing heavily.

Zayn isn’t sure what Harry whispers, but it sounds a lot like, “Thank you.”

 

-

 

It rains for several days after they return to London, but Zayn is strangely grateful for the miserable weather. There’s something he enjoys about staying and keeping warm, hiding under mountains of blankets and ordering in. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know anything different to it. Maybe it’s because it reminds him of his life in Bradford, a million years ago.

Rain isn’t as appealing in Elephant & Castle, where the bins are soaked and Zayn’s white trainers are ruined in a matter of minutes from the puddles in the cracked pavement. He’s damp and his clothes stick to him unpleasantly when he knocks on Niall’s door, his hair droopy and matted.

There’s no answer, so he knocks again. It was the second time Zayn had shown up at the gym, hoping to catch Niall off guard. Instead there’d been no sign of him anywhere, another instructor their – Josh something – who had told him it was no problem if he wanted a last minute session. Zayn had declined, aware of how this bloke recognised his face almost right away.

Footsteps sound, and then the click of the lock makes Zayn step back, his shoulders straight. A sliver of Niall, cloaked in shadow, appears through the crack of the door. Zayn feels suddenly awkward, staring at his toes.

“Zayn,” Niall breathes, and then opens the door all the way, his hardened stare softening into something more stern as Zayn steps into the tiny flat, the dingy light of the hall disappearing as Niall closes the door behind them.  They share a moment of silence and Niall swallows audibly, lips parting like he’s about to speak. Zayn had an entire speak ready and he’s already fucked it up, too unnerved by bruises marring the side of Niall’s face, the blood vessels in his eyes broken and painful looking.

“What the bloody hell happened to you?” he manages. It sounds harsh and demanding and not at all what Zayn means.

Niall’s lip quirk in a somewhat unfriendly smile, “I train boxers all day, Zayn, what do you think?”

Zayn opens his mouth to say, _but you’re better than to ever let anyone hit you like that._

His eyes catch the open bottle of Jameson on the counter and his voice is caught in his throat. It’s nearly empty.

Niall traces Zayn’s gaze but doesn’t make any excuse for it, and for some reason Zayn appreciates this.

“I’m back for a while,” Zayn says offhandedly, “You’re fucking worse than me when it comes to being reached, mate. That’s say a lot.”

Niall doesn’t confirm or deny that. Instead, he grabs the bottle by the neck, plops down on his l-shaped couch and gestures for Zayn to follow suit. Zayn settles in next to him, uncomfortably still at first at the end of the couch, before Niall sighs exasperatedly and manhandles Zayn closer until they’re nearly overlapping.

“Nice telly,” Zayn remarks, because he’s always been an idiot. Niall laughs, exactly how Zayn remembers, and it makes his cheeks flood with blood.

“I’m no posh rockstar, but I do alright, you know,” Niall teases, laughing louder than before when he realises he’s made Zayn blush.

 

-

 

Zayn wakes up with his mouth pressed against the corner of Niall’s hip, and Zayn sits up, blinking. This kind of darkness envelops him is onyx black and glows from the reflection of the moon just outside Niall’s window. He rubs his eyes, pushing Niall’s knee off his arm.

He realizes that Niall is awake too once he adjusts to the lack of light, staring at Zayn through his lashes. He crawls over the linear flat planes of Niall’s body and leans down, Niall’s hand brushing against his rigid cheekbone, reaching up to kiss Zayn on the mouth, pulling him down to fit on top of him.

Zayn watches as Niall traces patterns on his arm lying beside them, his knuckles scraped and not yet scabbed over.

“I used to live in Ireland,” Niall says, eyes unfocused and pointedly staring at a place behind Zayn’s shoulder.

Zayn braves a small smile, “You’re taking the piss. Really?”

Niall’s grin is lightening quick, “Yes, _really_ , you tit. I moved here when I was seventeen, and all I knew the bottle and the fight. So I started boxing, started winning...” his voice fades for a second, cracking at the end, and Zayn is unable to move, frozen by Niall’s words and the far off look in his eyes.

Niall swallows. “My older brother was this weak little thing. Sickly. Always getting picked on. He had this kid brother who could play sports and you know, stand up for himself – probably hated me if I’m honest.”

“I’m sure that’s how we always feel about our siblings, though,” Zayn supplements quietly, even though he’s the oldest and he’s pretty sure his sisters hate him even if he is their brother. _You’re a fake_ , Wayliah had hissed during a banquet in London. _I don’t know what they’ve done to you, Zayn_. They hadn’t talked since.

Niall’s index finger tucks under his own chin, muffling his mouth slightly.  “He committed suicide when I was seventeen. Never seen my Da cry before. I’ve always wanted to go back home and find those pricks who took so much joy in torturing Greg. I wanted them to feel what I felt.”

“Shit,” Zayn whispers. Niall wipes at his face, his lips bitten raw and his eyes glassy. “You’re okay.”

“Few nights ago I saw one of them at a pub a few streets down, and I lost it. I fucking lost it,” Niall says, chest moving with his heavy exhale.

“You’re not a bad person for it,” Zayn whispers, wincing because Niall looks like this, he can only imagine what the other guy looks like. “No matter what.”

The corner of Niall’s mouth quirks in a tender, halfhearted smile. Here in his dark flat in the middle of south London, lying on each other and tasting like sleep and dried rain, Niall is looking at Zayn with red rimmed eyes, his face a grotesque puce colour. Zayn’s never known anything more intimate.

He knows he’ll look back on this moment, hours, days, months from now. Nothing could replace how he feels, raw and open.

“I’m sorry,” Niall sighs. His fingers trace the top of Zayn’s cheekbone before weaving back into his tangled hair. “I just thought you should know that I’m kind of fucked up.”

Zayn laughs against the bright, pale moon of Niall’s cheek.

 

-

 

Hours later, the sky too dark to be morning but too milky and diluted to be anything else, Niall tips the bottle of whisky towards him.  Zayn takes the bottle by the neck, the cool glass on his fingers. It’s as if he’s breaking his vow to Harry, but making a promise to Niall.

 

-

 

He resumes training with Niall early in the morning again, four days a week. Jab, hook, cross, right, left, block, block, block, _fucking block me, Zayn, push me around. Lose yourself_. Jab, hook, cross, right, left, right, left, _destroy what destroys you_.

He wants to tell Niall, _I’ve seen the other side of destruction and came out of it alive_ , but that would mean talking about Harry and Zayn isn’t ready for that. There have been times he’s wanted to tell Niall his dark realms of his guilt for abandoning Harry, for letting him slip through his fingers.

It was him who encouraged Harry to smoke his first blunt when they were seventeen and just getting together, Harry the starry-eyed and young. It was him who kissed Harry straight on the mouth and pushed MDMA on his tongue that night after they won their first Grammy, nineteen and surrounding by bright lights and parties. It was him and Harry who snorted lines between shows and during rehearsals, because they’d been worked so hard there was never any time for sleep.

It was Zayn who turned a blind eye to the tourniquets, the weight loss, the new, suspicious friends. It was Zayn who gave him opiates when Harry couldn’t find his own fix to hold him over. Zayn might as well have held the gun in Harry’s mouth for him. Harry tells Zayn he loves him every time he ends a phone call without hesitation. And yet Zayn hesitates every time.

 _Stop running from your demons_ , Niall yells at him, his voice ringing for hours after in Zayn’s head. He traces the bruises of being knocked down in the steamy bathroom mirror, hearing the sound of Niall’s whisper in the shell of his ear. _Face your fears_.

 

-

 

Sometimes, when Zayn drops by late in the evening after the warehouse is closed, they’ll box just for fun. Niall is loose and easy then, when he’s not in training mode, laughing and tickling Zayn, footwork sloppy and playful.

Sometimes, Niall will push him up against the confines of the mats, manhandling Zayn in a way that sends a thrill down the base of his spine. Niall kiss with teeth and tongue more than anything when they’re rolling around the gym floor after hours, covered in sweat and chalk, taped hands pulling too roughly at hair and skin. Zayn would give anything to be forever suspended in moments just like this one.

Zayn smears the blood from Niall’s nose across his cheek, licking at it sweetly and trying to pull at the smile plastered on his face. Niall’s hipbone ruts up against Zayn, fitting perfectly between the v of his legs and he’ll pull his hair back against the mat until Zayn can feel his neck arched, nearly in pain and definitely uncomfortable, mouth parted openly as Niall takes. He’s had rough sex before, he’s been kinky, but this boy makes him earn it.

Zayn winces as Niall presses his wrists away from his crotch and milks him through his orgasm, breathing wetly on his shorts and tongue darting out to mouth secrets into his skin as he comes in his pants like a teenager. He can’t contain the broken moan that passes through his lips like a dream; Niall takes that from him too.

 

-

 

He’s falling into a pattern, and he’s falling in love.

It’s malignant. His heart fumes hotly against the confines of Zayn’s ribcage. He can peel back the bones and it would still not falter. He can feel it beating underneath his palm, erratic and harsh.

Harry has become a permanent fixture in Zayn’s flat, clinging onto Louis and eating enough candy to rot his teeth, never putting on proper clothes and ignoring the heaps of controversy he still manages to cause on twitter. Harry is their golden boy, and the world will accept him back into its arms in due time. It’s difficult explaining this to Harry, who wears his heart on his sleeve for everyone to see.

Zayn wants to tell him to go home, but doesn’t. Harry can’t go back to his old neighbourhood where there’s a chance his friends could find him, lure him back into his own demise. Harry loves too easily. He’ll get hurt again.

He thinks of the veins in Niall’s neck when he’s straining to push Zayn away, into the floor, into the wall, into the mattress, and how they pulsate, even late at night when night restores the quiet in Zayn’s mind. Niall is warm and roguishly honest and attractive. Zayn has no idea how to handle him, or if he even should, and he likes that.

Zayn’s so used to feeling guilty it sheaths him like a second skin. He remembers the nights when Harry would pass out and Zayn would untie the rubber band around his arm and put him to bed, wondering if this was the last time he’d ever see Harry open his eyes.

January graces them with bright, stark mornings. Harry is curled around Zayn like a rag doll, breathing soundly into his forearm.

Zayn pushes him away and dresses down, tapes his hand, and then sits on the bed again to tie his shoes. Harry murmurs, “You’re disappearing again.”

Zayn turns around. Harry is blinking owlishly at him, still sleepy and heavy limbed. “I’m going to the gym. No disappearing act here.”

“Sure, sure,” Harry mumbles antagonistically, but his smile is mischievous. “Don’t get so defensive. What have you, a secret boyfriend hidden over there?”

Zayn’s back snaps up rigidly, and Harry’s mouth parts in a perfectly pink o, before his tongue darts out and licks his lips. Harry looks upset, but he’s hiding it behind a teasing smirk, his head propped up against his hand, running his fingers down Zayn’s back thoughtfully.

“Oh, you do, don’t you,” Harry licks his lips again. “Well then.”

“It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t,” Zayn says shortly, standing up and pulling a hoodie around his shoulders. They ache in a pleasant sense, like bruised fingernails.

“When I can meet him?” Harry pouts.

Never, Zayn wants to snap, because Niall will take one look at Harry, one fucking glance, and know exactly why Zayn came to him in the first place. Everything he has with Niall right now is brand new and bright. There’s promise there, and Zayn can’t bring his skeletons forth just yet. He’s still barren and naked with his grief. He’s not ready to share it.

Instead of answering, Zayn bends down, holding Harry up to him with one arm in a crushing hug, kissing him soundly. He tastes like sleep, his smile warm and milky. “There are eggs in fridge for you, so don’t burn the place down. And call Liam back about those lyrics.”

 

-

 

“You’re improving before me eyes,” Niall remarks, flipping a stack of pancakes onto his plate. Zayn hovers near the table, audible pitter-patter of the rain outside matching his mood and making him nostalgic. “Strong.”

“Mostly I just hurt,” Zayn shrugs. He’s still finding a way to feel okay about Niall giving him compliments like that.

Niall nods, “Makes sense. I mean, you fight with this intensity, you know. It’s rare for a beginner. But you’ve it, I’ve seen it. This rawness about you.”

“And you’ve seen it all, haven’t you?” Zayn knows his eyes are full of stars when he smiles up at Niall. Niall chucks a napkin at him.

“I have,” Niall agrees. “But nothing like you.”

 

-

 

Like clean linen, rain water and sweat on the mats, leather and toughness, Niall is the most refreshing smell Zayn can remember. His smile is brightly cut and luminous, and Zayn only catches glimpses of it at it’s full effect, eager for it like a reward. It’s honest. It’s the most honest thing Zayn’s ever known.

“We’re going back to record, soon. The bandmates and I,” Zayn sighs, watching water trickle down the window pane in Niall’s flat.

“Famous bandmates,” Niall snickers, running the pad of his thumb over  the nicks on Zayn’s hand while they roll around in his sheets together. They’re both exhausted and wrung out, Zayn’s muscles burning pleasantly. “Fancy lot, you are.”

“You never ask about them,” Zayn remarks suddenly, turning to Niall. “About our careers.”

“Never felt like I needed to. Should I have?” Niall smiles, tracing the outer veins through his thin skin now. “Is there issue there? Are you romantic with one of them or…?”

“No,” Zayn swallows, because Niall is new, and shiny, and everything they have is still so breakable, “Nothing like that at all.”

“Well, I’ll be here training as usual. Very busy with that. So you go off and do your gig...and I’ll be here, sparring with my Olympian.”

Zayn laughs, “I’ve always liked how humble and down to earth you are..”

“You like a lot of things about me,” Niall grins, kissing the side of his mouth. His eyes are mischievous and too blue in this light. “Especially that I can kick your arse.”

Zayn thinks that’s probably true.

 

-

Part III

-

 

The air is wet and dirty with smog, drifting through the crack in Niall’s window, sitting pleasantly on Zayn’s wet skin. It’s early, earlier than it should be considering he’d barely slept through the night. They couldn’t be bothered with sleep, pressed between sheets until the sun broke the sky that morning, Niall touching Zayn like he was an ache, careful and intense. If Zayn could crawl beneath all the layers of Niall, he would.

His skin tingles as he pulls on a borrowed jumper, still brand new and not yet smelling like Niall. Zayn wishes it did. Niall is still in bed, the rivets and dips of his back shifting like a slow tide when he moves in his sleep.

“Hey,” Zayn leans over, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck, “I’ll call you later.”

Niall mumbles before rolling deeper into his duvet. Zayn trails his fingers through the canyon between his shoulder blades, marveling at the strange ridges of Niall’s spine.  He’s never loved someone who he wasn’t afraid to touch. He’s never loved someone like this. He doesn’t miss the sleep.

 _I’ve found someone who fits me, and I am happy_ , he wishes he could say to everyone on the tube that morning, the earliest of commuters taking the train up into central. It’s a feeling so bright he can barely contain it.

 

-

 

Zayn is the last one to find him.

The elevator ride is quiet and static until he gets to his floor, then when he enters his apartment. Someone is sobbing up in the loft, so he races up the stairs, taking two, three steps at a time, panting as he comes to a full stop in front of his bed, and then he stands there, with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides. He knows, distantly, that he will feel like this no other time in his life.

Louis is curled over Harry, his back curved in such a way that looks painful. The sobbing Zayn heard is coming from him in short dry heaves. Zayn’s never seen a human being so wretched with pain. His skin looks like it might tear over his bones as he curls up into himself, clenching and unclenching.

Liam is the in the corner, pale faced with his phone pressed to his ear, mouth parted like he’s trying to find words but cannot. Zayn knows that feeling.

And Harry.

Harry is lies in the middle of Zayn’s bed like the center of a shrine, skin blending into the flawless white of the Egyptian cotton, displaying him like a deity. The tourniquet is still tied around his arm, the needle lying inches away from his elbow, and Zayn has the sudden urge to remove it. It looks like it hurts him, even though he can’t feel it anymore. He can’t feel anything.

Louis is still blubbering nonsense, screaming about hope, and Zayn thinks somberly, _no_. There is no hope. There is nothing.

Harry looks soft and beautiful in death, which is unfair, because there is nothing soft or beautiful about it. His lips are creased and blue, parted like he was smiling.

 

-

 

Liam calls the paramedics but it’s futile, a useless gesture made in part for Louis and his onslaught of disbelief that Harry is really gone.

But he is. He was gone long before Louis came this morning to check on him, gone before the morning broke. Zayn wonders if it would have been different, if Harry had gotten to see the sun rise one last time. Maybe he would have survived. There are scatters of Louis’ belongings where he dropped them on the bedroom floor, and Zayn tries to picture how their morning would have gone if Harry had woken up like he was supposed to.

Zayn can’t think like that now.

The medics haul Harry out on a cot, enclosing him like a saint in all white and covering his face. Zayn wants to tell them, don’t cover his face, he’ll suffocate. You’ll suffocate him. The words fill his mouth and his teeth feel cold and numb against the inside of his cheek. There’s dried blood on his chin from his lip. He can’t remember when he split it, but it bleeds openly, cracked in the middle. Their driver escorts them to Louis’ flat and they all sit on a sofa that’s probably never been used before this.

Their entourage of managers and assistants are run in and out of Louis’ flat, hushed and quiet, phones pressed to their ears. Paul is crying quietly behind his newspaper, open to the same page for the past thirteen minutes. Harry’s mother is being sent for, and then they can start the burial process. He sits quietly with his hands in his lap as Louis pitches a tantrum, smashing dishes and a laptop, screaming at anyone who dares to console him. He is inconsolable. He is breaking in half.

Zayn feels like a child. He slips out into Louis’ private balcony to smoke, forgetting entirely that he smokes in the first place. He brings his cigarette to his lips and inhales, but his hands and fingers feel foreign to him. They shake until Zayn gives in and stubs the fag, running a hand through his hair and trying to catch his breath.

Liam is standing just inside, waiting for him face ashen. He curls his hand around Zayn’s neck and pulls him forward, hugging him, and Zayn shudders, clutching Liam hard enough to break bones. It’s warranted, he thinks. They’re all broken now.

 

-

 

Hours pass without any of them realising it. Louis does not relent, even though his body is shutting down with exhaustion. He sobers from his grief only long enough to sit for a minute and drink some orange juice provided by one of their assistants, but it’s not long until it dawns on him what has happened and he crumples with it over again. It’s like watching water beat a rock until it cracks, over and over.  

Liam cries quietly, closed off and meek, staring off into the distant as Louis screams, destroying his flat. He doesn’t scold Louis; try to corral him to reasonable or quiet. It’s the first time Zayn’s witnessed it.

Zayn doesn’t cry at all. He stands in the corner of the room, watching but not seeing, thinking about his morning, and how drastically it’s changed. It’s like something has bottomed out inside of him, and he can’t quite catch his breath.

 

-

 

Grief hits the media before it hits Zayn. Zayn isn’t caught in the flood as it tidal waves through London. Harry Styles is dead of a Dilaudid overdose. They call it accidental. They call him a victim. They say he was innocent. Zayn wants to believe it, but he doesn’t know. These suspicions haunt him well into the next morning, and the morning after, and every morning after that. He hasn’t gone back home yet.

They tell him there is a shrine outside his flat now, lit like a fire, an ocean of pictures and candles and rosaries and holy books, fan-made art and letters, the abundant bunches of flowers spilling into the road and causing traffic diversions. It’s larger than the shrine that has grown outside Harry’s old flat in east London, far more encompassing than the one growing up north in Holmes Chapel. Zayn wants desperately to know if this is a sign.

They’re mourning a boy laden with too much tragedy. Tortured soul, talented soul, beautiful soul, they write, and Zayn wonders exactly what the mean by it. Last week _The Sun_ was running stories about Harry that spun him as nothing but a drug addled waste, and now this.

Their come-back album is released the next day, still slotted in its original debut, and Zayn knows his producers could have put a hold on it but didn’t want to. This is good for sales as anything else. Zayn feels wretched just knowing this.

Critics and fans alike hail it as harrowing and raw, an excellent comeback for a band that nearly fell from grace. Every song is drenched in Harry and the words he wrote, while in rehab and then in Sweden when they started piecing it together. It traumatises Zayn now, thinking of all the time he could have spent in Harry’s presence and chose not to.

It’s the fear that guts him. He’d been too afraid to get to close to Harry, terrified he would lose him again. _Well_ , Zayn thinks to himself harshly, _you lost him anyway_. He’d stayed away and kept himself safe and he lost Harry anyway. He wishes he could rewind the last few weeks and hold him close, kiss Harry until he was breathless, took the time to ask Harry how he was coping with all the pressure that was put on him. Would he have caved if he weren’t so alone? If Zayn had loved him like he pleased? Was it preventable? Was it written in the stars?

These are questions that haunt Zayn, but he’s sure of one thing.

All Harry ever wanted was Zayn’s time, and Zayn couldn’t even give him that.

 

-

 

Harry died four days before his twenty-second birthday.

That means he saw over eight thousand sunsets and even less sunrises - human hearts beat three billion times in their average life span, and his beat only a quarter of that. His skin was still dewy with youth, with promise. His lips were still red-ripe, plucked from a brand new flower. His lungs were not ash, not dust, not broken.

He will never see that movie that comes out in July. He will never count the next leap year. He will never roll over and look at Zayn through his lashes, or drink the last of the milk, or thumb the pages of _GQ_ , combing for pretty male models. His laughter is only encased now by memory, or a recording of a memory, a repeating reel in Zayn’s brain that he can’t shake.

Zayn can feel every second tick inside his bones, every moment Harry will miss from now on, but the real ache comes when he realizes he will continue do all these things, but without that boy by his side.

 

-

 

The funeral comes and goes. It’s a masterpiece, really, because people love talent and they love tragedy, and Harry was an enigma ensnared with both.

Zayn is somber throughout the service as he sits up front, Louis wracking with the weight of his grief, silent but hysterical. His pain is tangible. Zayn could reach out and touch it, thinks it would burn, but instead he keeps his fingers tucked underneath his thighs.

Harry’s mum speaks, a fragile, weeping woman who looks likes just like her son. _There is something unnatural about burying your child_ , she says, and Zayn nearly breaks with it. Harry was a child. They are all children.

Liam speaks next, gripping the sides of the podium, steading himself. “We cannot begin to express our immense sadness,” he begins, unable to look at the masses of people sitting in the pews. “Harry has been like a brother to us since we were kids, just starting out. We loved him like we love our own. It’s as if – “Liam swallows, breaking for a moment, his breath caught on the loud speaker, echoing throughout the church. “It’s as if we’ve lost a limb.”

They play one of their songs at the end of the service. It’s aptly, cruelly called _The Funeral_ , something Harry wrote, and Zayn has to fight against the urge to cover his own ears.

 

-

 

They split up after that. Harry is the suffocating elephant, and neither of them can see around it.

They all meet at tarmac. Louis is being sent home to home to his family where he can grieve quietly. His skin is sallow, hair pushed underneath a beanie. They still haven’t talked about Harry; Zayn isn’t sure he can. Louis is incapable of trying to do anything more than sleep and breathe. Zayn is envious of that. His head hasn’t stopped aching in the last few weeks.

Liam presses his thumbs into the tender skin underneath Louis’ eyes as they part ways at the airport. Liam is going to Spain to grieve. They all need their time. Zayn toes the puddles as London continues to downpour on them. It’s rained for six days.

“You go home to your mum, and you rest, alright? I mean it, Lou,” Liam’s consternation sounds so familiar and loving that Louis closes his eyes, clinging tightly onto Liam’s back like a child. They all know Louis will only rest once he’s tired himself out, but he agrees anyway in order to placate Liam.

Liam needs his illusions. Zayn recognizes a defense mechanism when he seems one, and he knows to stay well away from it. They all have their vices.

They all hug, and at first Zayn’s body protests as if he hasn’t been touched in months. Their smell is foreign, their hands feel new. Liam nods at Zayn, cupping his face with endearment and sadness, mouth pressed firmly to keep away the tears, reserved in way only Liam is capable.

 

-

 

He can’t go back to Louis’, but he can’t go home. Zayn wonders if he can pay someone to move his things out so he’ll never have to see that bed again. It may as well be a casket. Zayn cannot bear to picture the Harry’s clothes in his close, his slipper socks tucked under the sofa. He thinks of all the things Louis’ had dropped upon finding Harry; they’re probably still there, forgotten and unimportant.

Instead he walks through London, avoiding puddles and pulling his rain slicker over his head, face tilted down.

Harry’s face is on every newspaper, praising him, worshipping his talent. He’s not old enough to be part of the twenty-seven club, but they’ve made him out to be one of the young greats anyway: McQueen, Cobain, Morrison, Holly, Buckley, Hendrix, Joplin, Styles.

Their fourth album had been songs of pain, recovery, addiction and sadness. _Oh the Tragedy_ , one headline reads. Another says, _The Boy who Loved too Much_. Zayn wants to spit. When he was alive, Harry had been ridiculed and picked at like he was an animal, nothing more than the silly rake of the band. He thought they hated him. He hated himself. In death he is a musical genius to be discussed for decades to come. In death he is a martyr for all the lost boys.

 _I loved him first_ , Zayn wants to tell them. _I loved him before any of you ever laid eyes on him_.

He turns on his personal phone for the first time in nine days. There are four voicemails: the first three are from Niall and the last is from Harry. Zayn stops in the middle of intersection, staring blankly at the screen and has trouble swallowing. A car honks at him and he scatters, running through a puddle and soaking his pants and shoes.

He listens to Niall’s earliest voicemail, dated the day Harry died. _Come round after hour. Promise I’ll go easy on ya, Zed. Give me a ring_.

It followed by the second three days later. _Zayn, it’s been four bloody days. I know you’re busy being famous, but that doesn’t give you any right to be a cunt and miss your training. Let me know_.

Followed by: _I saw - about - on the news. Come see me when you can. Don’t do anything stupid._

He doesn’t play Harry’s. The voicemail’s time log is dated the same day he died.

 

-

 

Zayn is drenched, jeans soaked from getting slicked in that puddle and hood never pulled up after wandering for a good hour. He ends up near Kennington, and takes the underground to Elephant & Castle like it’s muscle memory. Zayn’s face is numb, and his hands are puffy from the blood pooling in the tips of his fingers.

The television is blaring as Zayn passes the flat on the ground floor, knees cracking as he climbs up the stairs. He knocks, knuckles leaving wet marks against the door.

Niall pulls it open without checking who it is first, like he was expecting Zayn.

“Are you drunk?” This is the first thing Niall asks, his voice is quieter than Zayn has ever heard it.

“No,” Zayn shakes his head. “Just tired.”

“Yeah,” Niall agrees, heading towards his bathroom. “Let’s get you out of those clothes.”

Zayn’s damp skin smells like a decaying forest. Niall helps him undress, fingers running along the newly formed muscles on his hips, back, ass, thighs. Zayn feels like Adonis underneath Niall’s gaze but not in the way he’d have hoped; Niall is touching him as if he is made of marble, and one wrong move will break him. Zayn cannot decipher if he is tired or grateful for this treatment.

They rinse underneath a weak shower head with bad pressure, droplets running down the long straight line of Zayn’s nose onto his top lip. He leans into Niall, resting his head on the muscle cord of his shoulder, letting the water roll down his back.

 

-

Zayn is led by hand to Niall’s bed, and he crawls in, his naked skin damp against the plain sheets. He blinks up at Niall, staring at the dips in his clavicle. He feels strangely like a child.

“You hungry?” Niall asks, slipping on a pair of boxers and walking over to lock his front door, turning out the kitchen light. Zayn shakes his head no, to which he says, “In the morning, then.”

The blankets rustle as Niall settles in. They don’t touch, Niall giving him a small berth. Zayn finds himself missing the manhandling, their skin blending together into an array of different shades, from dark to light and dark again, the way their bruises will sometimes line up like constellations, and yet he is grateful Niall gives him the space.

“He was sent to rehab right before we met and I started boxing,” Zayn swallows, staring up at the ceiling. Niall is lying on his side, watching Zayn. “You always ask me what I was running away from, well, it was him. It was guilt that I felt because I knew he was addicted and I didn’t do anything. I know it’s me that’s supposed to love him, and I just let it happen. I gave him whatever he wanted, or whatever drug he asked for. Didn’t say no.”

Niall is quiet, his hand sweeping across the sheets until his palm meets Zayn’s wrist. He cups it gently, his skin clammy.

“Can I ask you something?” Zayn says finally, his voice thick with snot.

Niall nods, cheek resting on his open palm against the pillow. For someone so fierce and so vibrant, he is silent, and reserved, and Zayn is comforted by this.

Zayn swallows, “Do you ever...do you ever forget them? I’m scared I’ll start to lose memories of him and -”

Niall shakes his head. “You never forget. Your memory doesn’t come from here,” Niall points to Zayn’s forehead.

“But down here,” Niall’s palm reaches his heart, hand impossibly warm as it palms his chest. “That’s what matters. They never go away, but the pain will become manageable. You can manipulate it and control it. Can make you stronger.”

“I don’t feel so strong right now,” Zayn confesses, and when he blinks a tear rolls out from underneath his lid.

“I don’t think anyone would expect you to,.” Niall whispers. “Were you in love with him?”

Zayn nods, closing his eyes a second time. His throat is tight and painful as he holds in his tears. “It was impossible not to. He _made_ you love him.”

“Me saying sorry doesn’t change a thing, but it doesn’t mean I’m not. I know what it’s like to lose a brother. Wish I could make it easier,” Niall pulls his hand away from where it was resting against Zayn’s chest, his hand print still hot.

“He was more than just a brother,” Zayn whispers, closing his eyes. He looks at Niall one last time, skin tinted like orange glass from the streetlamp outside. Niall regards him sadly, nodding against his sheets. He doesn’t seem perturbed about the history between Harry and Zayn.

“They always are.”

 

-

 

Niall is sitting cross-legged in his pants and eating a bowl of cereal. The clinking of the spoon against the glass is what wakes him, regaining a sense of light and how the air in Niall’s apartment always feels drafty, but clean and without fragrance. Zayn feels like he slept for days, his skin is plastered to the pillow, cheeks bruised from pressing into the mattress.

“Hey, get dressed. You want some cereal?” Niall asks after he drains the last of his milk. There are tiny red lines on his stomach from where the skin had creased as he leaned over Zayn, little blonde hairs swirling around his navel. Niall stretches out against the bed, rolling close to Zayn. Zayn wiggles his toes against the quilt, unable to decide whether he should get up and try to function or live underneath Niall’s blankets, stark naked, for the rest of his life.

“Zed?” Niall’s voice is soft like old cotton. Zayn curls in on his side, turning away to face the way. There’s a small triangle of light above him, dancing along the cracks in the plaster.

“Not yet,” Zayn whispers and his eyes are already drooping. He feels Niall press up against him, warm even through the blankets. His hand comes to rest across Zayn’s chest, fingers finding the old handprint he left the night before. Niall sighs against his neck, and his eyelashes flutter, tickling Zayn. They lie there for a long while.

 

-

 

The daydrips into night  like the sun is giant melting ice lolly, until it’s just bridging into dusk and the sky is a kind of purple that reminds Zayn of Harry. It’s lavender, maybe a plum-lavender, and the night is warmer than usual.

He wakes up a second time, this time slowly, enveloped in Niall’s smell. Zayn finds the moment to appreciate the tiny mole on the inside of his elbow, the bump of his vein on the back of his hand, his blunt and rounded fingernails.  Niall has small hands considering the damage he is capable of causing with them.

Zayn turns over, careful not to disturb Niall’s arm slung over his side. Niall is awake, blinking in a sluggish way as he types something out on his phone. He looks to Zayn, eyebrow raised.

“I’m gonna ask you something stupid,” Zayn mumbles, sleep crusted around his mouth. “What do you think happiness is?”

Niall doesn’t mock or laugh. His eyes are drawn up in tranquility and perhaps concentration, similar to how he looks just before knocking Zayn flat on his back, but with less anger and more sadness. “I always thought it was like waking up when the morning is still dark and realizing you still had another hour to sleep.”

“Could it be that simple?”

“Could be,” Niall shrugs. “I want to take you somewhere.”

 

-

 

Zayn dresses in a beanie and too many sweaters underneath his gym clothes. Niall kisses him just before they leave his flat. Zayn wishes he could vanish into Niall’s mouth; sleep in his brain and pass through his dreams. Niall’s lips are cathartic, and Zayn yearns for them.

“You’re taking me to train?”

Dawn has yet to break, the roads empty, and it would feel eerie except that Zayn is grateful for the quiet. They’ve never held hands, but after a while Zayn slips his hand into Niall’s sweater pocket, their hips knocking together every so often. The streets are slick and speckled with spilled bins, discrete and poor in a way Zayn is not yet used to. He needs it though.

“No. You’re mindset is still too fragile.  You’d end up killing one of us,” Niall’s cheeks are pinched pink from the wind. They end up at the community centre pool, Zayn can scent out the chlorine even from outside. “I used to swim for the school team.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Niall strips down to his trunks, then hands a pair of Zayn. They’re probably going to be too short but Zayn slips them on anyway. “I even won a scholarship for uni because of it.”

“I didn’t know you went to university.”

“I didn’t. Greg passed a few weeks later, and all I wanted to do then was fight. I like to swim in the mornings. It calms you. It helps wash away some of the day to day shit.”

“I don’t swim.”

“Well, you do now.”

“Niall,” Zayn eyes the water warily, not daring to dip even a toe in. “I don’t know how to swim.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve taught you something,” Niall steps into the water, wading in and holding his hand out. “Come on.”

 

-

 

Niall doesn’t ask Zayn to hit him as hard as he can or tell him about the Rules of Swimming like he did when he taught Zayn something the first time.

Instead, he balances Zayn up on his back, his hands guiding him underneath the water. Zayn tips his head back, feeling the water and learning to trust it. Soon, he’s dragging his arms through it, finding the reluctant pull and challenging it.

Zayn focuses on the soft sound of the water trickling into the drains, the hum of the dimmed fluorescent lights above them. Niall is silent and impossibly still, though Zayn can still pick out the calm thud of his heart, a sound he’s become particularly accustomed to.

He learns how to breathe underwater, then how to open his eyes. It’s magnificent under here. It’s so blue. All of his thoughts disappear then, and Niall is right: He is at peace. He can feel his heart. He feels more awake than ever.

Niall kisses him underneath the water, pressing pruned fingers up to his cheeks and the crinkles in his eyes, going cross eyed just to see Zayn crack a smile. They are compilations of everything they’ve experience and everyone they’ve met along the way. Niall carries his brother in the haunches of his shoulders, pieces of the places he’s been between every finger. Zayn wonders if the clutch Harry has around his lungs is obvious to the naked eye.

Harry left marks on Zayn too, not all of them destructive, cruel, and terrible. Harry left imprints on Zayn, little reminders of his presence for Zayn to find later. The way he makes his bed, like he’s making it for two, or the urge to buy English tea at the grocer, even though he doesn’t drink it. Harry even leaves dust on Niall, the way Zayn handles him. Handles him with care and comfort and attention the way Zayn never did with Harry. Loves him the way he never wanted to love Harry.

Zayn thinks about what it means to die. Before it was an elusive, taunting idea to entertain, because it wasn’t real. Now it’s all too real, and he wasn’t ready for it. Losing Harry has left shrapnel in his soul.

Grief works in circles for Zayn: He keeps feeling an indescribable urge to go back to check on Harry at his flat in Notting Hill, find his rehearsal schedule, or book a table at a restaurant they both want to try, and then he remembers.

He remembers those things will never happen again. Harry is no longer mass, or body weight, or brain matter. He is a memory. He is a whisper. He exists in pictures and music videos and articles, but Zayn can no longer prove him real by holding him in his hands.

When he surfaces, Zayn’s breath catches like a trip wire, an ache in his chest from holding still for too long under.

“Let’s swim to the bottom one last time,” Zayn catches Niall’s forearm on his way out.

“Okay,” Niall agrees, already disappearing under.

The lights near the bottom of the pool cast a golden hue against Niall’s alabaster skin. His shoulders look like they’ve been doused in shimmer.

 _A sudden glow_ , Zayn thinks to himself, nearly swallowing a mouthful of water when he presses his lips to Niall’s neck. Niall shines because he is not ensnared like Zayn, he is bright, and he is free. _I am so fucking blinded_.

 

-

 

It’s been a month since Harry has died. Zayn lives in constant fear of forgetting.

He fears he will only remember pre-rehab Harry, because that Harry is one the he loves, even when he was breaking his own nose tripping against the pavement, too drunk to walk. Then Zayn realizes, he was more than just some drug addled kid.

It’s hard to decipher which Harry he means to miss most.

He misses Harry before he found heroin, and coke, pre rehab, pre Grammy. That Harry was all smiles, giddy and childish with their fame, unable to stand still. He clutched at Louis’ fingers on the car rides to award shows and before concerts, and Louis would kiss every knuckle like a promise. Harry would get so nervous before, he’d puke until Zayn would pass him a blunt and he’d become bleary eyed, and soft.

Harry after he was released from rehab, nesting on Zayn’s couch and eating ice cream out of the tub to keep his hands busy, clinging to Louis like a lifeline so the cravings don’t sneak into his brain, sleeping next to Zayn like a kitten with his curls slipping to Zayn’s mouth by accident.

Zayn loved every version of him, helpless to Harry and his demons. He loves Harry the songwriter, Harry the doomed lover, or Harry the rake. He loved Harry when he would sip his tea on the balcony while Zayn smoked a cigarette, his long limbs lying out on the veranda and teasing, d _raw me like one of your French girls, Leonardo_. He loved the Harry that loved him. 

-

They end up watching a lot of television when Niall finishes his appointments. Zayn rarely goes out, and his belongs are starting to grow in the corners of Niall’s flat. He’s still hidden and safe here, doesn’t check his phone when he doesn’t need to.

He is safe curled into Niall’s side as if they are replicating a ying-yang, or a smiling sun and crescent moon, or an eight limbed, two headed monster, beating with only one heart.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Niall warns him, fingers brushing over his eyebrows. Zayn hums, too drowsy to answer, and he knows Niall will have to carry him to bed later on. He’s gone within a matter of minutes, Niall’s hand a million degrees, curled around his closed fist, keeping him anchored.

Could happiness be this simple? Could be. Could be.

-

Sometimes Zayn wakes up inside of his own grief. He thinks he finds a soft spot in the fog, breaking through and finding Niall’s smile, or Niall’s pajama shirt tucked underneath the pillow, and he’ll think, _I’m starting to heal. I’m going to get through this_.

Grief doesn’t work in that way. No one ever describes it properly, and there’s no way of preparing for the onslaught. Zayn didn’t expect all the anger, but it comes in waves, makes him want to tear at his own skin. Sadness follows, of course, guilt like a predator circling around Zayn until he’s vulnerable enough to let it in.

Finding reminders of Harry in his day to day life is like a clenched fist around his stomach, and Zayn finds himself navigating his every waking moment trying to avoid memories of Harry. He seems to find them at every corner.

Their album is selling out, selling faster than any other album of theirs has ever sold, which is saying something. They’re all over every magazine cover, the subject of news and debate among talk shows and commentators. Zayn shuts off his phone except to call his mum, but rarely does her phone pick up. Mostly he leaves her voicemails.

Harry’s downfall is now considered inevitable. Zayn refuses to believe that. There was always hope for Harry. His talent did not guarantee his life expectancy. _Everyone loves them now_ , Zayn thinks to himself. He can see them being written into the books, but all of it feels cheapened. They didn’t earn their spot in music history and fans they garner from now on are not much more than followers to a martyr.

It’s fitting, he supposes. Harry was the type of boy who burnt the whole city to the ground if it meant lighting the way.

Louis, as far as Zayn knows, is still with his mum, licking his wounds. God knows if he’ll ever be truly the same feisty, sensitive little shit Zayn grew up with and came to love. Liam has left Spain to find relief in Thailand, according to his last email, free of typos. Zayn doesn’t want to tell him that salvation from this will never come.

Harry’s voicemail is still there, searing like an accusation..

-

Niall finds him curled underneath the sheets, thumb brushing over the call button. Some days are okay for Zayn. Other’s aren’t.

“He left me a voicemail before he died,” Zayn explains, turning around to face Niall. He wonders what he looks like, sleep trodden and bleary eyed. Exhausted from his mourning. Exhausted from his rapidly beating heart. “I haven’t listened to it.”

Niall has a cut on his lip and his fingers look stiff and uncomfortable as they come up to brush Zayn’s cheeks. His eyes bleed with earnest. “You’ve got to. You’ve got t'do it.”

Zayn shakes his head. “I don’t think I can.”

“You can’t let this haunt you, Zayn. It’s eatin' your soul, that.”

“What _soul_?” Zayn croaks,  “l didn’t care enough about the one person who always cared about me.. I loved him, and it still wasn’t enough. Why didn’t I do anything?”

Zayn closes his eyes and concentrates on his last memory of Harry: his lips look like they’ve been stained with blue ice lolly and his toes point in like he used to stand as a kid, pigeon toed. He looks young. He looks fragile. His eyes are closed like he was sleeping, and Zayn hopes to dear god that he had fallen out of this life while he dreamed of better things, prettier things, because Harry’s life had been a swirl of self-hatred and music and drugs, and he always loved the wrong people at the wrong time but he still loved so much. He still. He -

Zayn can see it in his head now: The sun came up to greet Harry, and Harry rose to greet it, and so it goes.

“Listen to it,” Niall whispers, clutching the phone. “Listen to it. You'll be okay. I promise.”

Zayn takes the phone from Niall, and then he presses play.

 

-

 

_Zayn it’s me. I’m calling cos you gone and disappeared again, and I wanted to tell you that the night smells just like it did during the summer. Funny that, cos it’s nearly February. I hope you’re home soon and I miss you and you’re a dickhead but I [...] love you lots. Love you._

-

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is lavenderforl-uck. i welcome constructive criticism x


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